More Articles News

comment

An Orange County woman has admitted to supplying narcotics to a quadriplegic man in Port Jervis before helping him take them, leading to a fatal overdose.

Katelynn Smith, 24, pleaded guilty in Orange County Court to felony counts of criminally negligent homicide and criminal sale of a controlled substance for her role in the April 18 death of Nicholas Moscatiello.

Smith admitted to going to Moscatiello’s Port Jervis home on the day of his overdose and selling him 12 oxycodone pills. She then helped the man crush the pills up, rolled up a dollar bill and assisted him in snorting them. She also said she knew Moscatiello was drinking liquor at the time he took the drugs and that he took Klonopin for his medical condition.

An autopsy report from the Orange County Medical Examiner found that his cause of death was a combination of the oxycodone, alcohol and Klonopin. Smith remains remanded to the Orange County Jail and has been scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 18, with prosecutors recommending six years in prison.

“Illegal drugs are destroying lives, families, communities,” Orange County District Attorney David Hoovler said. “Drug dealers must be made to pay for the damage they are doing. Here, someone died as a result of this defendant’s actions in illegally selling him drugs. Sentences for selling drugs are one thing, but, hopefully, this case will send a message to all the illegal drug dealers out there: In appropriate cases, this office will seek to prosecute you not just for selling drugs, but for the deaths of those people that your drug dealing kills.”